Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 23:38:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Dolphin Dan
Subject: rip the jacker part 4
Rip the Jacker (Part 4)
By Dolphin Dan
*** WARNING ***
This story focuses on masturbation and sexual desire among members of the
same gender and of opposite genders. It also contains descriptions of
sexuality. If it is illegal or morally uncomfortable for you to view such
material, please do not continue. This story is a work of fiction. It did
not happen.
***
[OUR STORY: "Rip the Jacker" has struck four times, causing no harm but
leaving "artifacts" around the school stolen from various unsuspecting
people. After the last two "targets"--a self-important student council
type and a popular freshman--the school community is beginning to notice.
Kyle, who works on the school paper, wonders if the trail will eventually
lead to him.]
***
The next day--Wednesday before Christmas break--Paul came to find me at my
locker before school was in session. "Meeting with Royce at the Iliad this
afternoon," he said solemnly. Royce Champion, a senior, was the student
editor of the school paper. "It's important." I had the feeling that it
had something to do with the Jacker. I was amused and eagerly excited for
the meeting; it was a long school day.
During that school day, in the halls I overheard the very first public
scuttlebutt I experienced regarding the phenomenon. Passing two senior
boys at their locker on my way to history class, I overheard a snatch of
conversation.
"...some guy going around stealing things and jacking off on them."
"Creepy!"
"The principal won't admit it, but I talked to somebody who found..."
We met at the Iliad office in one of the activity rooms right after school.
Royce was there, plus Jennifer, one of the other reporters. Mrs. Brune was
not there. Royce looked strangely grave and troubled. I realized for the
first time that he was pretty cute. He had collar-length red hair,
kind-looking blue eyes, and usually wore old sweaters, baggy jeans and
Birkenstocks. He was not chubby, but had an unusually meaty ass for a guy
who wasn't overweight. I liked that. It sounds prejudiced, but most white
guys don't have asses worth a damn.
"This meeting is confidential," said Royce as we all sat down.
"Something's happening around the school, and I'm not sure the
administration wants us to know about it. There may be some kind of
pervert stalking the halls. Paul, why don't you tell us what happened?"
"Do any of you know Joe Carallo?" he asked. I replied that he was in my
history class. Paul said, "He came up to me at lunch today. He wanted to
talk to me because he knew I worked on the school paper. He had a really
weird story.
"Joe carries around a beeper. Two weeks ago it went off in Mr. Lowery's
history class and Lowery confiscated it. You may have heard there's a new
rule about beepers and cell phones--that's why. Lowery had the pager in
his desk. Then it disappeared. The next morning some freshman went into a
second-floor bathroom. There was a plastic bag tied to the toilet pipes.
Inside the bag was Carallo's beeper, and a note made from little cut-out
letters, like a ransom note. The note mentioned Carallo by name. The
freshman went and told a study hall proctor, and they fished Carallo's
beeper out of the toilet. Long story short, somebody stole his beeper, put
it in a plastic bag, wrote this weird note and--" Paul looked a little
uneasy as he said, "--er, jerked off on it."
"What?" Jennifer gasped.
"It's true. I talked to the freshman who found it--Jordan Sonnenburg. He
swears it's all true. Carallo got hauled into the principal's office.
Says Reinhardt tore him a new--um, really yelled at him. They were
convinced he'd done it. They were going to suspend him and maybe even
press charges for breaking into Mr. Lowery's desk--they figured he must
have got a key somehow and went in after his beeper. He swore up and down
he didn't do it. THEN he found out from Lowery that this kind of thing has
happened before. The janitors have been complaining about finding weird
things in bathrooms all over the school, but now it's getting worse.
There's some creep going around stealing things from people, masturbating
on them and leaving them in bathrooms. He's been writing these little
notes and signing them--uh, 'Rip the Jacker.'"
We all laughed, but it was kind of uneasy laughter. I was starting to get
erect. I was amazed, terrified and excited at the same time.
"Carallo says the administration warned him not to breathe a word of this
to anybody. He contacted me ONLY on the condition that I not reveal his
name to the school, but he thinks this is something the students ought to
know about. Naturally the administration isn't saying anything."
"I went to talk to Mr. Reinhardt," said Royce. "I didn't reveal it was
Carallo who talked to us, but said that a student had come forward with
this story. I asked him point-blank if there was some kind of pervert
going around the school, and he just said 'that's none of the students'
business' and left it at that."
"He's stonewalling," I said.
Royce nodded. "Yes."
"That means there must be some truth to it."
"Probably. Whatever it is, it's not isolated. I heard a rumor that it
happened again just yesterday. Somebody found a sweater tied to a window
handle in the Alcove that had been--um, well, you know."
A sweater! I was amused by how the details were already beginning to
change.
"What are we going to do?" said Jennifer.
"Mrs. Brune has the power to veto any story that goes in the Iliad," Royce
replied. "She has to approve every issue before it gets printed. The
special Christmas Break issue comes out Friday. Tomorrow noon is our last
chance to change it before it goes to the printer. As soon as Mrs. Brune
gets wind of this she'll get Reinhardt involved, I'm sure. He'll probably
want the story killed. But I think, if we all agree, we should still write
it. It's harder to kill a story that's already written than prevent us
from writing it in the first place. I think we ought to take a stand. If
there is some weird sex criminal running around, I think the students ought
to know about it.
"Kyle, you and Jennifer can work with Paul--he took notes on his meetings
with Carallo and Jordan Sonnenburg. Write the story. You can work on it
on the computers in here tonight and tomorrow morning. We'll get it to
Mrs. Brune second period tomorrow. I want to try to get a teacher to go on
record. I know Mr. Lowery is still in the building, and I'm going to go
talk to him and see if he'll admit that the beeper was stolen from his
desk. This is an important story, guys--and it's controversial."
"What are we supposed to write?" asked Jennifer, sounding confused.
"The truth. What we know. Carallo's story--as much as we can say without
incriminating him, because he'd get in trouble if the administration knows
it was him who talked to us. I say, let's just raise the question of
what's going on here and why the administration won't tell us."
"We're going to get in SO much trouble," said Paul.
"Maybe, maybe not. I think we ought to make an attempt. The paper is for
the students, isn't it? If there's somebody dangerous going around, we
should know about it, shouldn't we? The administration has no right to
suppress this, and they know it."
I was excited, scared and offended at the same time. Dangerous? I wanted
to ask Royce, how do we know the Jacker is dangerous? Has he hurt anybody?
He hasn't even exposed himself to anyone! But I was flattered at the same
time. There was going to be a big fuss about this, no doubt about that. I
couldn't let on that I knew anything about it.
"I'll write it," I said. "Let me call my mom and tell her I'll be staying
late tonight. Then we'll get to work."
It was one of the strangest experiences I ever had. Not only did I have to
pretend like I knew nothing about the Jacker that wasn't told to me by
Royce or Paul, but I had to try to see the phenomenon from the point of
view of those who didn't understand the first thing about why I was doing
what I did, and if I failed in that task, I'd be suspected first of
anybody. I stayed late that afternoon, typing into one of the computers in
the computer lab. As Jennifer and I worked, Paul came into the office at
one point. "No teacher will go on record," he fretted. "But I'm convinced
Mr. Lowery knows something about this." For quite some time we discussed
what we should say and what we shouldn't say, to protect our sources and to
avoid getting into serious trouble ourselves. It was almost seven PM
before I called my mother from the pay phone of the Homer High lobby and
told her I was ready to be picked up. By that time Jennifer and I had
finished the article, printed it out and put copies in Royce's and
Mrs. Brune's boxes. Paul had taken a few pictures--mostly of the locales
where the Jacker had been alleged to have stuck--and put them on a computer
disc ready to be added to the front page before it went to the press
tomorrow. We went home, feeling for the first time like we weren't just
high school students pretending to run a newspaper, but like we had real
jobs, and had done something meaningful. This was satisfying to me even
above the sexual thrill of being (secretly) the focus of so much attention.
Here was the article we wrote:
IS AN UNKNOWN VANDAL STALKING HOMER HIGH? By Jennifer Simmons and Kyle
Levecque Photos by Paul Carson
The Iliad has become aware of rumors that a mysterious thief and vandal has
been making the rounds of the school this semester, stealing objects from
students and then leaving them in strange places, with unusual calling
cards.
A male Homer High student, who has declined to be identified, came to the
Iliad stating that a personal object belonging to him was recently stolen.
The next day the object was found in a boys' bathroom, with a strange note
attached mentioning the student by name. There was also evidence
suggesting that the perpetrator had masturbated onto the object and left it
there for someone else to find.
The student said he was asked by certain members of the administration not
to reveal this story to anyone, but he felt strongly that the student body
had a right to know of a potential danger. The student also told us that a
faculty member told him that this was not the first time it had happened,
and that several other incidents have happened where personal things from
students have disappeared and then reappeared later under strange
circumstances.
This account was confirmed by another student, who also did not want to be
identified, who claims that he found a sweater somewhere on the third
floor, with another student's name written on it. The sweater appeared to
have stains on it, similar to the condition of the other item that had been
stolen earlier.
We contacted Mr. Reinhardt for confirmation of this account, and he
declined to go on record.
We haven't found anyone who claims to have actually seen the thief and
vandal in operation. We're also not aware of any evidence pointing to the
identity of the vandal, whether it is a Homer High student or somebody
else.
While we stress that the Iliad can't confirm or deny that these things are
actually happening, we believe it is a good idea to keep an eye out for any
suspicious activity, and if you see something that doesn't look right,
notify a faculty member or security guard immediately.
[Photo: Entrance to the second-floor bathroom where stolen objects have
reportedly reappeared.] [Photo: The third-floor alcove where a soiled
sweater was allegedly discovered.]
* * *
The next morning, as I expected, we got in trouble.
Even before the school day started, in homeroom class I got a note reading,
"Mrs. Brune would like to see you at the Iliad office during 1st period."
The envelope included a signed hall pass that I could present to my
first-period teacher excusing my late arrival. My stomach sank. At first
I thought I'd been discovered, but then I realized I was supposed to see
Mrs. Brune. If someone had known I was actually the Jacker, I'd have been
summoned to Reinhardt's office for sure, or perhaps even arrested.
Jennifer, Royce and Paul were in the Iliad office when I arrived.
Mrs. Brune was ashen-faced. She sat down at her desk in front of us.
"You can't print this," she said.
"Why not?" replied Royce, obviously annoyed.
"Several reasons. First of all, you're intending to violate a strict
policy of the administration. Even if this rumor was true, the
administration does NOT want this spread around the school. Secondly, it's
not good journalism. You're reporting rumors, not fact. You say what
these students told you, but you can't verify whether it's true or not.
Third, even if you could print the article at all, you cannot--I repeat
CANNOT--submit an article that's indecent in any way."
"What's indecent about it?" said Royce.
"That word, for one," said Mrs. Brune. She leaned across the desk and gave
him her copy of the article. On the first page, the word MASTURBATED was
circled in an ellipse of angry red ink. She couldn't even bring herself to
say it.
"It's the truth," Royce shrugged. "That's what our source told us."
"And that's another thing," replied Mrs. Brune angrily. "This whole
'we-protect-our-sources' thing isn't going to wash. If you print this,
Mr. Reinhardt will demand to know who talked to you. That person will be
suspended, and maybe even expelled. If you refuse to tell him, you three
will be suspended--maybe even expelled."
"So what you're saying is, this is a school paper, not a real one where we
have to protect our sources?" I quipped.
"Kyle, that is COMPLETELY out of line. You four are very lucky I'm not
submitting this to Mr. Reinhardt right now. I'm so damn mad at you I
thought about kicking you all off the paper. But then I realized your
motives are at least defensible." She sat down. It seemed she had vented.
"I want you to give me all the copies of the article in your possession,"
she said. "And the disk you have the article on. I'm going to shred the
article and erase the disk. You will not--repeat NOT--talk about this
story to ANYONE. If you four give me your word you won't talk about this
to anyone, I'll agree not to go to Mr. Reinhardt. But if I hear you've
said anything to anyone, I WILL go to him, and I WILL suspend all four of
you from the paper. Understood?"
What could we do? We shuffled out of the room like wounded dogs with our
tails tucked between our legs. Paul was especially upset. "Fucking
bitch," he spat. It was unusual; he hardly ever cursed, certainly not like
that. "She's in with Reinhardt. They're suppressing the story."
"What are they afraid of?" I asked.
"Maybe they're afraid it'll cause a panic," Royce suggested. "Students
will go around in fear thinking there's some pervert around, and then
parents will start calling the school district demanding to know what
they're doing to catch him."
"So what do we do?"
"What CAN we do? If we breathe a word of it, we're thrown off the paper
and probably suspended. In the meantime I bet the administration is hoping
either they can catch the Jacker in the act, or that he'll stop on his own
before it goes too far."
We were walking toward the cafeteria. I couldn't resist saying what I said
next:
"I have a feeling," I said, "that whoever the Jacker is, he's NOT going to
stop on his own."
The next day, the Friday before Christmas break, the last issue of the
Iliad for the semester went out. Its front page headline was not IS AN
UNKNOWN VANDAL STALKING HOMER HIGH? but rather, HOMER HIGH STUDENTS GREET
THE WINTER HOLIDAYS.
*** *** ***
The gauntlet had been thrown down. Now it was a matter of honor. The
suppression of our story proved to me that suppressing knowledge of the
Jacker was a high-stakes matter for the administration. My pride was
wounded for two reasons. First, although I probably should have expected
it, I was a little hurt that everybody seemed to assume the Jacker was some
kind of dangerous maniac, a sexual predator who probably dreamed of eating
people's livers with fava beans and a nice chianti. Secondly, I thought
Mrs. Brune's attitude toward us was completely unprofessional. The Homer
High Iliad wasn't the New York Times, I grant you, but if we weren't
allowed to report what was going on in our school honestly, what good was a
school paper in the first place?
Although I realized that the risks were now much higher, and that if I
continued my activities I might well end up thrown out of school or even in
jail, I had plans to continue my attacks, and in fact even step them up. I
began to imagine what would happen if the Jacker story went public. The
administration's position created what I realized was a dangerous situation
for them: if word got out, somehow, that these attacks were happening, and
that the administration knew about it but made no attempt to warn people,
it would be a scandal. Something about that appealed to me. That,
unwittingly, became my goal.
My preparations kicked into high gear. I realized that in the selection of
my targets I could no longer wait for serendipity to strike. The backyard
wresting match, the muddy football game, Joe's pager going off and seeing
Ronan at the theater had all been random events, but I began to understand
that I couldn't wait for those events to happen in the same way anymore, or
at least I had to do something to help them along. Over the Christmas
break I struggled with the issue of how to find targets prospectively, and
finally settled on a procedure. I would make a list of guys from school
that I thought were cute, and that I thought could conceivably be targets.
Then when school started again I'd watch them, and await opportunities to
steal objects from them. Only those people whose appearance or demeanor
struck me the right way would "graduate" to being full targets. If I
hadn't collected my artifact by then, I would set my task to do so; if I
had already collected it I would return it with no harm done. But I also
knew this would take research, cunning, and practice. Over the break I
started to prepare myself.
I thought that one thing I should learn to do was pick locks. At first I
thought I couldn't do that, because picking locks was seriously criminal
behavior. But I tried to find out about it anyway. Over the break I went
to the public library and used one of their Internet computers to look up
information on it. It was surprisingly easy. I went to a hardware store
and bought some old key padlocks, and began to practice surreptitiously in
my bedroom with little bits of metal and straightened-out paper clips. It
was difficult at first and I knew it would take me a while. But somehow I
had a feeling the skill would come in very handy.
I also made my list. On the evening of December 30 I paged through last
year's Homer High yearbook and made a secret list of attractive guys. Most
of them were in my class, but not all of them. I looked at each picture
and tried to imagine the person in real life, and if there was something
distinctive about them. My final list of potential targets surprised me,
because there were some names on it that I didn't expect to write down.
Here it is, copied from the original sheet of notebook paper on which I
wrote it, and secreted in my folder behind the Tenets:
SENIORS Craig Rosenbaum Dominick Petra [Claire's older brother] Royce
McClaine
JUNIORS Paul Carson Alec Perrin Marcus Rigby Evan Akiyama Jesse Norris
Harold Mellon Scott Billson Dave Vera
SOPHOMORES Chad Pressman Jamie Holyfield Corey Ream
FRESHMEN Eric Lowe Jordan Sonnenburg Ben Wigo
Two other things happened over Christmas break that were significant.
One--which I'll talk about in a minute--involved Paul. The other was that
I lost my virginity.
Claire wanted to go to a New Year's party at the house of one of her
friends, Chloe, whose parents were out of town for the holiday weekend. It
took some arguing with my parents to get to go--and some outright lies,
such as when I told them Chloe's parents WERE there--but I went. My
parents were right not to want to let me go. There was plenty of beer
there, and some of the stoners were smoking pot. Claire was never much
into that kind of thing, but she wasn't totally straight-laced either.
After midnight--it was now 1998--we were sitting on the couch together and
began making out. Both of us had had a few too many beers. Jeremy dropped
by and sat on the couch with us. "Jesus, get a room, you two," he said.
I won't go into the details of the story because they're not very
important. But, let's just say Claire and I ended up in a back bedroom of
Chloe's house, making out something fierce. "Kyle, do you want to?" she
whispered in my ear, kissing down my neck. It was a wonderful sensation,
and I was stiff as a board. "I want you to, Kyle. I think I love you."
"Are you sure?" I asked. I meant it as, as you sure you want to do it,
rather than, are you sure you love me.
"Yes. I'm sure I love you." That was a good enough answer for me.
I was very surprised. When we started undressing and caressing I thought I
wouldn't be able to go through with it. Much of my sexual attention had
been focused entirely on guys for the past few months. But in reality I
needn't have worried. One brush of Claire's gentle hand on my dick and I
was totally ready to take her. It didn't last long--perhaps three or four
minutes--and because we didn't have a condom I pulled out of her before I
was finished and came in her hand. She wiped it off with a tissue, which
disappointed me, but she was new at this and I had to cut her some slack.
I felt the same kind of glowing satisfaction I felt when I finished a
Jacker attack, though it wasn't quite as intense. Still, it was nice.
Over the next few days I thought I would regret it, but I didn't. Claire
and I were definitely together after that-- a long-term couple. Before
school started again I had her over to our house to meet my parents. I was
developing true feelings for her. It was strange, because it was all on a
totally different level than the Jacker stuff. It's like I was two people,
one a completely normal, well-adjusted, heterosexual honors student, and
the other, a gay, reckless, possibly perverted thrill-seeker and petty
criminal. These two facets of my personality were like ships passing
distantly in the night. They never met each other.
The day before school started again Paul called me. "Hey man, want to come
over this afternoon?" he said. I had nothing to do, and Claire was out
shopping, so I said sure.
Paul's room in the converted, detached garage was really cool. It was more
like a control center than a bedroom. He had three computer monitors,
several desktop computers under the table, and a tall metal cabinet full of
video equipment and other gadgets. It was just a lazy Sunday afternoon at
home for him. When I knocked on the door of the garage I heard him say,
"Come in," and I opened it. He was sitting in his office chair, swiveled
around, aiming some kind of video camera at me, but it was very small,
barely the size of his hand. He had on baggy jeans and dirty socks, but no
shirt. There was a Coke can and a plate of half-eaten pizza on the desk in
front of him. "You could be a movie star, Kyle," he said. "Like the
camera? It's my Christmas present."
"It's awfully small."
"It's a remote. Look." He set the tiny glass eye on the table, then
flipped a switch on a computer. One of the monitors suddenly showed me
what the camera saw--books and the side of one of the other computers.
"The lens is a wireless," said Paul. "Here's the rest of the camera." It
was sitting on another part of the desk. "Cool, huh?"
"Yeah. Great."
Paul should have put his shirt back on before I arrived. Perhaps I have a
bad habit of blaming people for doing something that unwittingly makes them
attractive to me, but my first thought was, you take your shirt off around
me, you sign up for the consequences. Seeing him bare-chested made me
instantly hard and cemented the fact that he would become a Jacker target
eventually. He was slightly chubby but not unattractive. Before I saw him
I did not realize how much I liked boys who were a little heavier than the
norm; all of the targets so far had been on the thin side, except for John
Crane, whose weight was in muscle, not fat. Paul seemed a bit more
developed than many guys my age; he had a thin little patch of wispy hair
in the center of his chest. His white shoulders were covered with faint
freckles. Almost instinctively I began looking around the room for
something I could filch. But I quickly vetoed the idea. If I stole
something that I could only have gotten access to by being in Paul's
bedroom, that would immediately finger me as the thief. I had to wait.
Paul took a bite from the pizza, and while chewing, his fingers flew over
the computer keyboard. Information flashed over one of the screens.
"Here's why I wanted you to come over," he said. "I'm trying to figure out
who the Jacker is."
My stomach sank. He suspects me! I thought, but then calmed down. I
didn't know that. I sat down on his bed, which wasn't far from the desk,
and looked at what he was bringing up. It was some kind of data folder
with the title "JACKER."
"I've been talking to some people on the phone, Homer High people," said
Paul. "Off the record--not for the paper. I've learned a lot more. This
thing goes a lot deeper than anybody thinks." Paul clicked something on
the screen, a file of some type. Its title was CARALLO.WAV. From a
speaker, I heard Paul's voice--and that of another boy.
Paul: "How did your pager get taken away?"
Other voice: "It went off during class. Lowery's class. He confiscated it
and put it in his desk."
"Carallo?" I asked Paul.
He nodded. "I taped my conversation with him," he replied.
"Isn't that illegal?"
"Yeah, but who's ever going to find out?"
Paul on the tape: "Did you see Lowery lock the drawer?" Carallo: "I don't
remember. I don't think so. When I talked to him the next day he swore he
locked it. Mr. Reinhardt was there, he said it in front of him." Paul:
"They thought you broke into the desk to get it back." Carallo: "Fucking
pricks. They kept asking me, 'How'd you get the key? How'd you get the
key?' I said I didn't know what they were talking about." Paul: "Did they
tell you where they found the pager?" Carallo: "Not at first. They kept
hinting at it, like, 'We know you did it, just admit it,' but finally I had
to ask them what they thought I did." Paul: "Who do you think did it?"
Carallo: "No clue. Some sicko who's obsessed with me." Paul: "Who tried
to page you during Lowery's class?" Carallo: "Huh?" Paul: "Who tried to
page you? When your pager went off in Lowery's class, who was it?"
Carallo: "I dunno. Don't remember. Some number I didn't recognize."
Paul: "You still have the pager?" Carallo: "I haven't touched it since
they gave it back to me. They found it in the toilet--the fucking toilet!
I switched it off and put it in a drawer." Paul: "Then the number could
still be in memory. Could you look it up?" Carallo: "I guess so. Why,
you think it's important?" Paul: "It might be. Can you call me back?"
Paul clicked off the sound file. He said, "He called me back. I didn't
have the recorder on when he did, but I got the number--it was 522537. He
said he remembered the night before, he kept getting a page with that
number. He remembered it because it wasn't a real phone number, it's only
six digits."
Paul's investigative work was both terrifying and exciting. The wolves
were drawing closer, and I have to admit, as scary as it was, it gave me a
strange kind of thrill. I could feel the tip of my dick getting slightly
wet. I feigned being casual. I shrugged and said, "What does that have to
do with anything?"
"Someone paged him several times with that number the night before. Then,
during Lowery's class, someone paged him twice. I kept trying to figure
out if that number means something. Finally I figured out what it means.
It's a word."
"A word?" I was amazed. Paul was damned clever.
"Yeah. You know how phone keys have little letters on them? I figured
whoever paged Carallo was trying to tell him something. I set up my
computer to run all the permutations of any word that can be made from the
letters on phone keys corresponding to that number, 522537." He clicked
another file. It was a list of six-letter words. One word, at the very
end of the list, Paul had highlighted.
It was the word JACKER.
My mouth dropped open in genuine surprise. Now I did begin to slacken; I
was genuinely afraid of being caught, and that killed my arousal. "No
way," I said.
"Way," Paul replied. "The Jacker himself paged Carallo during Lowery's
class. And five times the previous evening."
"Why?"
"I don't know why the Jacker would have paged him the previous evening, but
it's too much of a coincidence that the pager goes off twice in class and
that's the number of the page--that had to be deliberate. Probably he did
it because he knew that if the pager went off in class, Lowery would
confiscate it. It makes sense. If the Jacker wanted Carallo's pager, he
had to get it separated from him somehow, didn't he? What better way to do
it?"
"So what does that prove?"
Paul sat back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. The hair
in his armpits was strangely faint and wispy, like dark angel hair. For
some reason I thought that was sexy.
"Well, for one thing, it proves that Carallo isn't the Jacker," he said.
"The administration assumed that he was pissed off that his pager got taken
away, he broke into Lowery's desk to steal it back, and decided to have a
little fun while deflecting attention from himself. Which doesn't make
sense--if Carallo wanted the pager back bad enough to break into Lowery's
desk to get it, why would he leave it in a plastic bag in a second-floor
toilet where anybody could take it?"
"Maybe be figured no one would go into the toilet to fish it out," I
grunted. "I sure as hell wouldn't."
"No, you're missing the point, man. The fact that we know the Jacker paged
Carallo BEFORE the pager got into Lowery's desk means that the Jacker had
it all planned out ahead of time. He KNEW where the pager would be. He
KNEW how he was going to get into Lowery's desk. Why would Carallo get his
own pager confiscated, just so he could go to the trouble of breaking into
the desk to take it? It doesn't make sense. And in any event it's
impossible, because Carallo couldn't have very well paged himself in the
middle of class, now could he?"
Seizing on a hopeful prospect, I said, "That also means the Jacker can't be
anyone in Lowery's class. Whoever did it had to have access to a phone the
moment the pager went off."
Paul took the bait. "Exactly," he smiled. I was relieved. Paul was
extremely clever, but even he hadn't thought of the cell phone in the
pocket trick.
"Who could it be, then?"
"Well, if it's a student, it's probably someone who doesn't have class
fifth period. It would have to be someone off-campus or in a study hall or
something where they could get to a phone or use a cell phone. I didn't
think you could use cell phones in study hall even before they were banned.
That doesn't mean that somebody didn't do it secretly, but it makes it less
likely."
"Maybe someone went to the bathroom or something and instead went to the
pay phone and called Carallo's pager," I offered.
"Maybe. But here's my theory. The Jacker is a faculty member."
I gaped again. "A teacher?" I said, astonished. "You think it's a
teacher?"
"A teacher, a security guard, somebody in the office--something. Somebody
who wouldn't have looked suspicious using a telephone during the middle of
the day, which students can't do that easily. Also it had to be somebody
who could have gotten into Lowery's desk. That's the real stumper--I can't
figure out how the Jacker did that, unless he had an extra key or
something."
"Or can pick locks."
"I talked to another victim. The one with the sweater, remember? Only it
wasn't a sweater--we got that wrong." Paul turned back to the computer.
He clicked on another file, this one marked RONAN.WAV.
Paul: "Hey, Ronan. It's Paul Carson." Ronan: "Hey man! What's up? I
don't think you've ever called me before." Paul: "I wanted to ask you
something. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. But I
heard that you know something about this 'Rip the Jacker' thing that's
going on around school." Ronan: "Know something? Shit, do I ever. If I
find out who that sick son of a bitch is, I'm gonna fucking ram his head
in!"
I almost laughed, but at the same time I felt kind of guilty. The Jacker
had style, but he didn't seem to have many supporters.
Paul: "What happened?" Ronan: "My jacket got stolen. You know, from work,
my Royal Cinemas jacket. I was in the library one day and I stepped away
to get a book, and when I came back the jacket was gone. The next day I
got called into Reinhardt's office. He says, 'Somebody found your jacket,'
and he hands me this plastic bag. I almost fucking puked. Some faggot
fucking spooged all over it and hung it up in the third floor alcove."
Paul: "Sick." Ronan: "No shit! I had to throw the jacket away!"
Damn you, Ronan, I thought, I left that money in the pocket for a reason!
Paul: "Did Reinhardt say anything about who they thought did it?" Ronan:
"No, he just said not to tell anybody about it." Paul: "So why are you
talking to me?" Ronan: "Reinhardt's a fucking dickhead. He gave me
detention once for being in the hallway thirty seconds after the bell rang.
I hate that bastard. I don't give a shit what he says. I heard this is
going on all over the school, so how are they gonna trace it back to me?"
Paul: "I'm trying to figure out who this guy is." Ronan: "Good. I owe him
an ass-kicking." Paul: "Who was in the library the day your jacket got
stolen?" Ronan: "I don't remember. I think--I dunno. Some girls I think,
and I think Penny Hampstead was one of them." Paul: "Well, it's not
her--the Jacker's obviously a guy." Ronan: "I don't remember anybody else.
I don't remember seeing anybody." Paul: "If you think of anybody, would
you call me?" Ronan: "Yeah. Sure."
He clicked off the file. "That's our best clue," said Paul. "If Ronan can
remember who was around in the library that day, we'll have ourselves a
list of suspects."
"What makes you think he will?"
Paul shrugged. "He probably won't. But I'm hoping for a lucky break. But
at least we have a suspect now."
"Who?"
Paul clicked on something else on the computer. A window came up. It was
a photo that had been scanned into a picture file. It was scanned from the
Homer High yearbook, faculty section. It was a picture of a middle-aged
balding man. Underneath it were the words, JOHN C. STEINMAN, LIBRARIAN.
I almost burst out laughing, but tried to keep a straight face. "You think
it's Steinman?"
"He's a possibility. We know it's somebody who was around the library.
That could be anybody, but Steinman's in the library all the time. We know
it's somebody who has access to a phone. Steinman's got an office in the
back of the library--I'm sure he has his own phone. Steinman's kind of
weird. He's not married, he's real quiet and he acts kind of funny
sometimes. There are a lot of rumors that he's gay, and we know the Jacker
has to be gay. Steinman seems like the type who might be a secret pervert
or a pedophile or something."
I shook my head. "Amazing. You're quite a detective."
"If the Jacker's a faculty member, it would also explain why the
administration doesn't want it to get out. If they suspect it might be one
of their own, they're sure as hell going to keep it quiet. I guarantee
this: if Steinman gets fired or quits or something in the next few weeks,
and the Jacker attacks stop, we'll know it was him."
"What if he doesn't? What if he keeps going?"
Paul smiled self-assuredly. "Then I'll catch him," he said ominously.
"The Jacker is gonna screw up eventually. He'll leave a clue and that'll
be that. We'll get him. I just hope we can solve it before the
administration sweeps the whole thing under the rug."
I went home from Paul's house both terrified and amazed. Paul was a little
too clever for his own good. His reasoning was brilliant, but he had been
led in the wrong direction. I was perfectly content to let him persist in
the theory that the Jacker was a faculty member. And I thought it rather
neat that I had helped him reason me away from suspicion--by the perfectly
logical assumption that no one in Lowery's fifth-period history class could
be the Jacker. So long as Paul believed that, I thought I was invulnerable
to suspicion.
This whole thing was getting very, very interesting.
*** *** ***
The next target was Dominick Petra, Claire's brother. He was a senior, a
year ahead of his sister.
He fancied himself a skateboarder, and he was about eight or ten years
behind the times. He wore flowered shorts, Vans sneakers, ugly T-shirts
with Hawaiian prints open over them, and cloth caps backwards. Claire had
told me many times that her parents thought Dominick was a complete loser.
He routinely got Cs and Ds, in marked contrast to his intelligent,
honors-student sister. He was graduating solely because his parents said
they would throw him out of the house if he dropped out of high school
before graduation. During his junior year he was busted for smoking pot.
For the last eighteen months he'd worked as an assistant manager at
McDonald's across from Aramingo Mall, and he fully intended to work there
full-time as soon as high school was over. But despite his shortcomings,
Dominick was hot. He was tall and bulky, not heavy or even chubby, but
more solid than any of the previous targets except for Crane. He had a
nice, well-shaped ass, and as he frequently wore ugly shorts, even in the
depths of winter, his hairy legs were usually visible. I don't know why,
but I had the impression he had an enormous dick. On the first day of the
new semester I watched Dominick lope down the hallway, skateboard in hand,
and decided that he should be the next target. He was a senior; all of my
previous targets had been in my own class, except for Ronan, and I wanted
to throw Paul off the trail as much as possible by trying to mix up the
class identity of the targets and avoid making it completely obvious that
the Jacker was a junior. I knew to keep the phenomenon alive the Jacker
had to strike again as soon as possible. Dominick was at least attractive
enough to fantasize about while jerking off, and, as a result of my
relationship with Claire, obtaining a belonging of his to cum on would be
much simplified.
The tricky part was exactly what to pick. As with Paul--who I fully
intended would become a target eventually--I couldn't steal something that
I would only have had access to by being inside the Petras' house.
Although that opportunity might make it logistically easier for me to swipe
the artifact--and in fact I intended to get it while over at Claire's house
the next time we were together--it would have to be something that could,
in theory, have been stolen at school, because of course to do otherwise
would direct suspicion at a narrow universe of Homer High students who had
been inside the Petra household. On the second day of the semester I
noticed that Dominick wore gloves. In fact that was his trademark. He had
these black vinyl fingerless gloves, the kind with the holes in the
knuckles. It must have been some weird skater fashion years ago, but on
more than one occasion I saw him wearing them as he grabbed his skateboard
from his locker at the end of the school day. I began to direct my mind
toward Dominick's hands. In much the same way as I had become fixated on
Ryan's hands--and his pen--so did I become aroused by the thought of
Dominick's gloves. The gloves covered his hands, and those hands touched
his (assumedly) monstrous cock every time he jacked off, every time he took
a piss. This was all the connection I needed.
The trick would be to steal the gloves but to throw Dominick a red herring,
so at the very least he would not know precisely when they were stolen and
thus could not definitively say whether they were stolen from his home or
from school. I had no idea what Dominick's habits were regarding his
gloves, but because I saw him on at least two occasions without them, I
assumed he habitually took them off at some point during the day. Maybe he
put them in his locker, or maybe his backpack; did it matter? I
anticipated that soon the Jacker would obtain a mythos that would imbue him
with virtually superhuman characteristics--already he could jimmy the lock
on Mr. Lowery's deck and slip away with Ronan's jacket without being
seen--so did it matter if the only way Dominick's gloves could go missing
is if someone broke into his locker or rifled his backpack? Frankly I
didn't have time to watch him so thoroughly as to become sure of when and
how often he took off the gloves and put them back on. On Wednesday of the
first week back from school I took the bus to Crossways Mall--I wanted to
avoid Aramingo, which was the main hangout of Homer High students--and
visited the skate shop there. With some of the $100 I'd gotten from my
grandparents for Christmas I bought a pair of gloves that looked roughly
like Dominick's. When I did laundry that night (since I'd written the
Tenets I had become fanatical about my privacy, remember, and wouldn't let
my mother touch my clothes) I tossed the gloves into the wash, hoping to
shrink and weather them to the point where, at least at first glance, they
would look like the real thing. Then I waited. Claire had made plans for
me to come over on Friday night. Dominick was rarely home on Friday
nights, as he was usually smoking pot with his stoner friends, and their
parents would be out at some banquet for her dad's work, so Claire thought
it would be the perfect opportunity to have sex--which, of course, it was.
It would also be the perfect opportunity to rifle Dominick's room, if I
could get away from Claire long enough so as not to arouse suspicion.
She wanted to make dinner for me that night. Claire liked to cook, and she
was excellent at it; in fact she was thinking of going to a culinary
institute after high school. I engineered a strange little machination.
She wanted me to go make a fire in the fireplace--she wanted a "romantic"
dinner with the two of us--so she showed me where the wood pile was, and I
went around to get some logs. She was in the kitchen, cooking; the new
Chumbawamba album, which was Claire's favorite, was blasting from the
stereo. As soon as I was out of eyeshot I slipped out of the room and
crept to the stairs. Making sure Claire was still in the kitchen, cooking,
and with the sound of my footsteps on the stairs masked by Chumbawamba, I
quickly darted up to the second floor. I opened the door to the bedroom
down the hall that I assumed had to be Dominick's. It was. There were
skate posters and pictures of naked women plastered on the walls. The
place was a complete wreck. I began to search, being careful to touch as
little as possible. Suddenly I heard Claire's voice from downstairs.
"Kyle! Can you come help me with this?"
My blood ran cold. I couldn't answer her, because I couldn't very well
explain what I was doing upstairs. But when I didn't answer her, she'd
come looking for me.
At that moment, on the dresser across the room, I spotted a pair of black
gloves lying next to a stack of skate magazines and some video tapes of
horror movies. I bolted. I had carried the gloves I'd bought, one in each
pocket (I had specifically worn jeans that had two good pockets). I pried
them out of my pocket, switched them with Dominick's real gloves, and
stuffed the artifacts into my pockets. Now I had to figure out a way to
get out of here.
"Kyle? Where are you?"
I crept to the door and peeked out. Chumbawamba was still blasting. From
the hallway downstairs I saw a shadow pass across the light that came from
the kitchen. Claire was moving into the living room where the fireplace
was. Now was my chance.
Trying to be as quiet as possible I darted down the stairs and into the rec
room that was off the kitchen. "Kyle? What happened to you?" I glanced
around the rec room; it was mostly dark. There was a computer in the rec
room, and a screen saver--a little postcard of Hawaii, which the Petra
family visited every other year--bounced slowly around the screen from
corner to corner. That was enough light to illuminate my options. I
recalled being here before. There was a sliding glass door and a deck
outside. If I could make it there, I could climb down the deck to the
yard, run to the wood pile, grab a couple of logs and come back in
pretending I'd been out there.
But then I heard the door from the living room to the backyard open.
"Kyle? You out here?"
I had just gotten to the sliding door. My heart was pounding. Very
slowly, very quietly, I clicked the lock on the sliding door to the open
position. When I heard Claire come back into the house I quickly opened
the door and bolted out onto the deck. I grasped the railing firmly and
began to vault myself over. I had no idea what I was going to land on, but
if I wasn't somewhere near the woodpile in a matter of seconds, the game
was up. It was bitter cold outside--this was in the Midwest in early
January--and I could feel my nuts shriveling up into my body.
There was a little barb, a sliver of some type on the wooden railing of the
deck right where I placed my right hand. I vaulted, but the corner of my
right thumbnail caught on the barb. As I went over I could feel my
thumbnail tearing away from my thumb. The pain was excruciating. I
collapsed in the snow, biting my tongue to keep from calling out. From
inside the house I heard Claire call, "Kyle! Kyle, where are you?"
In one of the outdoor floodlights I looked at my thumb. It was literally
dripping blood. I looked down. Several drops of blood had already landed
in the snow. I was on the corner of the deck, fifteen feet from the wood
pile. Frantically I flailed at the snow with my shoes, trying to cover my
tracks.
I ran to the woodpile and grabbed three logs. I figured I could fake it.
It would be plausible that I tore my thumbnail on a piece of wood, perhaps
as I was trying to remove it from the pile. That story would hold so long
as nobody noticed half of my severed thumbnail hanging from the railing of
the deck, probably accompanied by a big splatter of blood. I couldn't
worry about it; I had no choice. I grabbed the wood and stepped back into
the living room. By now Claire had moved into the kitchen.
"Owww!" I cried, for effect, after dropping the logs into the wood cradle.
"Jesus!"
The entire top of my thumbnail had been ripped off. My thumb was bleeding
profusely, and it hurt like hell. Claire appeared in the doorway. "What
happened?" she said.
"I tore my thumbnail," I told her, holding it up.
"My God!" She ran to me and applied the end of a dishtowel to my thumb.
"How did it happen?"
"I was out grabbing logs and my thumbnail caught on the wood."
"You were out there? I was just there. Where were you?"
"I heard you calling me, so I came back inside. I didn't see you, so I
went back out."
"Really?" She seemed puzzled. "I didn't see you there."
"You must have come out just as I was coming in." A drop of blood landed
on my shoe. "Owwwww--Jesus! Do you have some Bactine or something?"
We held my thumb over the sink, washed off the cut and bandaged it up. It
was pretty awkward. Claire kept telling me to go to a doctor, but I didn't
want to do that. Eventually she finished dinner. We ate, and then we made
love in her bedroom. Dominick's gloves remained deep in the pockets of my
jeans crumpled on the carpet of Claire's bedroom. When it was over and I
held her, feeling the warmth of her body against mine, I suddenly felt very
shamed, dirty, pathetic. Here in my arms was a taste of how normal people
got their kicks. But I wasn't so lucky. I was driven to do what I did,
and for a moment I desperately longed to be normal enough that Claire would
satisfy me. I went home that night feeling very low. The next day I sat
in my bedroom, staring at Dominick's gloves, and I felt nothing, no
arousal, only shame. I was a thief and a liar and a pervert. I considered
giving up the whole thing, of finding a way to return Dominick's gloves,
and let the mystery of the Jacker recede into the past, no (permanent) harm
done. By Sunday I had just about decided on this course of action. A new
Kyle would appear at school on Monday--a Kyle who was as honest,
trustworthy and conscientious as everyone thought he was, a Kyle who loved
his girlfriend and was happy with her, and a Kyle whose secret desires did
not get in the way of his real life.
Late Sunday night the phone rang. My mother called up to me that it was
for me. I went to the den and picked it up. "Hello?"
"Kyle! Paul here. What's up?"
"Just finishing up some English."
"Dude, there's at least one other Jacker incident I found out about. You
won't believe it. You think the thing with Carallo's pager and Ronan's
jacket was weird? That's nothing."
I felt a twinge of excitement in my groin. "Really?" I sat down in the
chair in front of the computer desk.
"I was talking to Ronan again and he said somebody in his science class
found something weird in one of the bathrooms a couple of months back. I
tracked him down, it was this kid named Andy Kamen, a freshman. According
to him he went into a bathroom on the first floor--this was, I dunno, a
little while before Thanksgiving--and he found someone spewed all over the
stall, and there was--" Paul made a strange sound that was halfway between
an embarrassed chuckle and a snort of alarm. "There was a pair of guy's
jockey shorts laying on the toilet, covered with--well, you get the idea."
"Ugh!" I feigned disgust. "That's absolutely revolting."
"It gets worse. There was shit all over them, too. Looked like somebody
had taken a dump on them. Whoever this Jacker is, he's a sick puppy."
I wanted to scream at Paul, it wasn't shit, it was perfectly clean mud! I
said, "That almost makes me sick to my stomach."
"Kamen says it DID make him sick. Literally. He lost his lunch right
there in the bathroom. The weird thing was, there were a bunch of those
little football schedule cards scattered all over the place. I keep
hearing rumors that the last two attacks the Jacker left notes. Jordan
Sonnenburg said there was a rolled-up piece of paper sticking out of the
pocket of Ronan's jacket, but he didn't touch it. Kamen said he didn't see
a note, though. So I don't know about the notes. Maybe it's just a rumor.
Or maybe the administration has 'em and they're keeping them secret."
"What did Kamen do about it?"
"Nothing," Paul replied. "He didn't want to touch it. After he threw up
he left the bathroom. It obviously got cleaned up, so probably a janitor
found it or something. This happened a long time before the Carallo thing.
Dude, the administration knows this guy is on the loose--but they can't
stop him, and they don't want anyone to know about it!"
"It definitely sounds like a cover-up," I agreed.
"I wonder how many other Jacker incidents there have been that we don't
know about. But word's definitely getting out now. I bet the whole school
is going to know in a few days."
This was the gist of what Paul called to tell me. When I hung up my
enthusiasm for the project had returned. It was too tempting not to go
through with it. I got the impression Paul was hoping for another attack.
In fact he seemed to be having the time of his life playing amateur
gumshoe, Dirty Harry trying to track down the bad guy before he strikes
again.
That gave me an idea. After thinking about it for a while it occurred to
me that Paul was right, that the whole school would soon know about the
Jacker whether Principal Reinhardt wanted people to know or not. Also it
would soon be known that Paul was asking questions about the phenomenon.
Why not court some publicity?
That night I planned the next attack--Dominick would be number five--and
made up my note. I thought a long time about it before I started to cut
out letters. This time instead of individual letters I cut out whole words
and parts of words; when finished the note looked a lot like those
"magnetic poetry" sets you see on people's refrigerators. It took me until
after midnight to finish; I had to do it secretly, with a flashlight in my
bedroom, so my parents wouldn't see a crack of light under my door and
think I was still up. I thought rhyme would be entertaining. The note
this time read:
WHO AM I, THE ONE THAT YOU SEEK? AM I A JERK OFF OR JUST A FREAK? I'VE
GOT A QUICK DICK BUT MAYBE I'M SICK EITHER WAY YOU'RE UP SHIT CREEK.
THESE GLOVES BELONG TO DOM PETRA, THE SK8R GROM THEY HAVEN'T BEEN HARMED
THOUGH THEY WERE CHARMED CUZ MY JISM IS REALLY THE BOMB.
RIP THE JACKER
I made another note too. I pasted a few cut-out words onto a yellow sticky
note. That note read:
CAN I GET THIS IN THE NEXT ISSUE? R.T.J.
I did not tie up the note right away. I put it in a manila folder in my
backpack. I kept the gloves in a pouch of my backpack, tied together with
a piece of long crepe paper ribbon, like the kind you use on Christmas
gifts. I left a long piece of ribbon where I would tie the rolled-up note
when I was finished.
This time I had decided to wait until after school. Before school on
Monday, I took the city bus to a shopping plaza several blocks from the
school. There was a 24-hour Kinko's there. They had the little plastic
counter cartridges that you put into the copier to make self-service
copies, so none of the staff saw what I was copying. I made a Xerox of the
note. Right there at Kinko's I took an envelope and a pen with green ink,
and, writing with my left hand so as to disguise my writing, I wrote, THE
ILIAD, HOMER HIGH SCHOOL, and the address of the school on the envelope. I
slapped the sticky note on the copy, wiped off both pages with my sleeve (I
was becoming less careful about fingerprints), folded the copy and stuffed
it in the envelope. I rolled up the original note, unzipped my backpack
and tied it with the ribbon. I put a stamp on the letter and dropped it
into the battered blue mailbox on the corner of the shopping complex
outside Kinko's. It was a very long, cold walk to school, but I made it in
time.
Monday was a pretty normal day, except for the rumors going around the
school. On three separate occasions I passed through the hallway and heard
students talking about "the pervert" or saying things like, "Ashley said
she heard from Jennifer that there's like this creepy stalker guy who's
going around..." I began working on my dick through my cut-out pocket
toward the end of seventh period. I had decided on the first floor again,
in fact the same bathroom where the John Crane attack had occurred. There
was a sudden lull throughout the school during the first few minutes after
the main after-school buses departed; all the students without activities
had left, and those with activities were settling down to them, so I could
count on a relatively quiet few minutes in which to do the deed.
Nonetheless for the last twenty minutes of chemistry I tried to keep my
penis hovering on the verge of orgasm for as long as possible. It was
really quite enjoyable. It would have been pretty bad if somehow I sent
myself over the edge and wet my jeans in the middle of class, but I had
enough control that I thought I could keep ahead of it.
The bell rang, the day ended and the halls filled with students. I
remained at my locker, lingering, moving books around and periodically
reaching into my pocket to keep my dick at full-staff. Finally, out the
windows across from my locker, I saw the flash of yellow buses against
white snow, and knew the main buses were departing. The gloves and the
note were in my backpack. I closed my locker and went to the bathroom. No
one was there. I chose a stall, set my backpack on the back of the toilet,
took out the gloves and began to unzip my jeans. Then suddenly I heard the
door to the bathroom barge open, and the shuffling sound of footsteps.
"Anybody in here?"
I was mortified. My jeans were unbuttoned, my fly down, and the head of my
erect dick was protruding from the enlarged fly of my boxers. A drop of
precum glistened on its tip. Instinctively, and as quietly as possible, I
hopped up onto the toilet itself so my shoes wouldn't show under the stall
door.
I heard two voices, both male. They sounded like students. One of them
bent down so as to make sure there were no feet under the stall doors.
Then I heard, "How much do you want?"
"You got three dime bags?"
"Yeah, sure, no problem." Rustling. Money changed hands.
"Is this the good stuff?"
"Man, this shit was genetically engineered in Mexico, man. Mellowest high
you'll ever have."
"Sounds good."
"Hey, this isn't enough."
"You know I'm good for it."
"Your credit's getting overextended, man."
Of course the buyer, whoever he was, had to pack a bowl and take a hit. My
knees began to go numb, and I was in imminent danger of losing my balance
and toppling off the toilet. I was perched there like a bird. My dick had
long ago slackened. I was going to have to start from scratch.
"Cool," I heard, amidst coughing. "That's good shit."
"No duh. You'll pay me next week?"
"Yeah, next week."
"Let's get the fuck out of here before somebody sees us."
I waited until after their footsteps died away. I thought it best to guard
against further intrusions. I sat down on the toilet, with my pants
bunched around my ankles, like I was taking a shit. With one hand I held
the gloves; with the other I shook my dick and slowly it became hard. I
tried to arrange my shirt so that it would muffle any noise, and I began to
masturbate under it. These were good precautions. Before I was finished I
was interrupted yet again. I heard footsteps, a zipper going down, the
sound of pissing in the urinal across the way, then flushing. The pleasure
began to build. I was squinting, biting my tongue, trying not to pant or
gasp or make any sound at all. Whoever was pissing had no idea I was
jacking off. He used the sink, took some paper towels, dried his hands,
and left.
The moment I heard the THUNK of the bathroom door shutting I stood up, held
the ribbon trailing the gloves against the wall of the stall so that they
were hanging down at roughly groin-level, and shot a huge, splattering
volume of semen on the gloves, the wall and the floor. It was pleasurable,
but nothing like the brain-rattling orgasms I'd experienced from earlier
Jacker incidents. I zipped up, then tied one end of the ribbon to the top
hinge of the stall door. I dipped my finger in cum and wrote the initials
"D.P." on the wall. I flushed the toilet even though there was nothing in
it, grabbed my backpack, and left. I realized I had to get as far away
from the bathroom, and preferably the school, as possible.
Twenty minutes later I was standing at a city bus stop, shivering in the
chill January wind. Attack number five had had a few bumps in the road,
but it seemed to have gone off successfully. My thumb, which was still
bandaged at the time of the fifth attack, eventually began to grow
infected, and I had to see a doctor. When my thumbnail grew back it had a
permanent groove in one side of it. That's my Jacker scar; no one, except
one who has read this account, knows that it didn't happen in exactly the
way I explained to everyone, that I had caught the corner of my thumbnail
on a piece of firewood at Claire Petra's house.
*** TO BE CONTINUED ***